


Second Daughter

by magelette



Category: Damar Series - Robin McKinley
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:45:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magelette/pseuds/magelette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rilly was born second daughter. Sometimes, she learns, that's a blessing in disguise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Daughter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neonhummingbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonhummingbird/gifts).



Rilly, Nandam’s daughter. Rilly of Shpardith, a twelve day ride from the City if you rode fast and hard. Rilly, sister of Senay, Queen’s Rider. Rilly, the youngest. Rilly, the smallest. Rilly, who always tried to be more than she was, because she bore the stigma of second daughter. What was Rilly of the Damarian backwater doing in the Homeland, awaiting an audience with the Queen? Her own sovereigns thought her mission foolish. Her credentials were laughable and the Outlander Queen probably wouldn’t have seen Corlath-sola himself, if the previous reign had set historical precedence. Those who ruled in the Homeland had happily ignored Damar’s existence for years, much less a young envoy from some provincial village barely found on Damarian maps. But she had to try. Charles-sola, an old man now, had offered to sponsor Rilly for a season in the Homeland, in order to try and unofficially gain some interest in Damar’s sovereignty, but even he seemed to recognize the futility of her errand.

Rilly might’ve been the second daughter, but no one ever said she swayed easily, especially once her mind was made up. Second daughters had to worker harder than eldest daughters. Second daughters fought for every scrap of recognition they could get. Just like Damar.

She wasn’t a formal ambassador. While Damar and its king and queen were recognized as existing by the Outlander Queen and her Council, their highnesses and the small mountain stronghold didn’t warrant official representation just yet. In her fortnight here in the Homeland, Rilly had heard the words “envoy” and “guest” tossed around, though most Outlanders –particularly the males – couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea of a woman – unmarried, at that! – who wore trousers and wielded enough power to represent a foreign interest, even if it was unofficially.

The handmaids assigned to her had tried to coerce her into the binding garb that Outlander women wore: skirts and underskirts and a torture device called a corset. Harimad-sol had mentioned these to her long ago, and Amelia-sol had clucked at Harimad-sol for speaking of them with such disdain. Amelia-sol, for all the time she spent in the City until her death, had clung to her Outlander garb, sweeping about the castle halls like the peafowl that haunted the forests near Shpardith. She had laughed at Amelia-sol’s bright plumage as a child, but in some way, the familiar sight of women trailing their long skirts was somewhat of a comfort in this strange land.

She arrived a fortnight ago after suffering nearly two months on that infernal boat. And she still had yet to meet the Queen, much less a Councilmember of any consequence. She had been paraded before minor nobility and gentry as if she were the latest wonder – a dancing bear, one inebriated young officer had said, not realizing how much Outlander she actually understood – but no one paid her any real attention. Senay would have been proud of her then; instead of calling him out in a duel of honor, she ignored his remarks. She couldn’t ignore the burning of tears in her eyes, but she schooled her face as best she could into the polite mask that the other courtiers all wore.

The courtiers didn’t sneer at her robes, but the young women who were her assigned companions did wonder at her mannish attire, her long dark hair – why wear it long at all if she were going to dress as a man? – and the lovingly-mended tear in her sash. They knew nothing of the churakak. Laprun-minta and Damalur-sol were just words rather than badges of honor. And when she tried to tell them of Aerin, of Fortunatar and of Ruth, even of Harimad-sol and the battle at Madamer Gate, they only stared at her blankly. Swordfighting and battles were unimportant, and worse, of the realm of men. Women didn’t dabble in such unseemly topics of conversation. These women, her peers in this strange land, had no interest in border skirmishes on the far edge of the empire. Their image of Daria was as strange to her as their own Homeland, and Damar was too small to register on their minds.

Corlath-sola had argued against sending her because of her youth and her inexperience. While she had successfully joined in talks in Ihistan and the southern cities, that was still in Damar proper. The people in those cities knew, however distantly, what her bloodline represented and what her status meant. To them, she was Rilly-sol, Laprun-minta and carrier of the sword Karna, personal envoy of their majesties in the City. To the Outlanders in their own court, she was naught but Rilly, second daughter of Nandam’s second wife, from a backwater village even by Damarian standards.

“Second daughter and child of the second wife.” Rilly had fought against this identity her entire life. Her brother and sister were nearly ten and fourteen years older than she was. She had worshipped the ground Senay walked on from her very first toddling steps. Senay had been the one to wrap her small hand around Dalig’s silver hilt and tell her stories of Aerin Dragon-killer and the other women who fought for Damar. Senay’s birth had been heralded with great joy, as the firstborn child of the sola of Shpardith. Rilly’s birth, fourteen years later, had been a surprise and a blessing – so her mother said, when her mother wasn’t furious with her – but hadn’t warranted quite the celebration as Senay’s. Senay had ridden at Harimad-sol’s side at Madamer Gate, and while Rilly had taken the laprun trials, it was Senay’s duel with Harimad-sol that they always remembered.

She loved her sister, just as she loved her queen and her country. She wore her sash and her robe with pride, and tried not to sneer at the women of the Homeland, so pale and weak beside her capable brown hands. Rilly had fought hard for her sash, and couldn’t help carrying the burden of dismay that it meant so little here, that the people of the Homeland were just as disinterested as when she had been Rilly, Nandam’s second daughter. On the boat over, she’d felt nothing but dread, like she was a small, dark shadow that had slipped into some bright life not her own. Wonder of wonders, she secretly rejoiced when she stepped down off the gangplank of the ship to find that not every Outlander burned with the same bright kelar-light of yellow-haired Harimad-sol. Outlanders were pale, but the hair of fire and hair of gold of Damar’s most beloved queens was just as rare on this strange shore. Ordinary dark hair, black as hers, was just as common here as in Damar.

“Lady Rilly.” One of the attendants ushered in the rather stern-looking undersecretary to the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain. “Her Majesty wishes audience with you now.”

Rilly looked down at her robes, rumpled from sitting curled up in the arm chair in her rooms as she dreamed of home. “Now, sir?”

The undersecretary granted her a small, kind smile. “Now, Lady Rilly. But don’t worry, her Majesty doesn’t bite.” He scowled. “No matter what certain chambermaids may say.”

Her Majesty Elspeth, second of that name, had reigned for nearly five years now. Her mother, Elspeth I, had been renown for ‘conquering’ the Darian subcontinent, as Rilly had heard endlessly in the past fortnight. Rilly could imagine what it was like for the young queen, trying to live in the shadow of her mother’s accomplishments. Though she didn’t share blood with the royal house of Damar, and though no kelar flowed through her veins, she knew the burden of being related to a living legend. Maybe being the second daughter of the second wife was a blessing, in its own way. No one expected anything of a second daughter, more an afterthought than anything else. Rilly had no grand destiny and no appointment with Luthe on his Lake of Dreams. And if her travels had taught her anything, it was that honor earned was easier to bear than honor granted by birthrite.

She wasn’t shown to the formal receiving room that she had been swept into upon her first arrival, when she had been presented to the court with the same generic fanfare that any foreign guest of minor renown might receive. This was an open door to a smaller study, still ornate, but hidden along a hallway in what was probably the private quarters of the castle.

“She’s waiting for you, Lady Rilly.” At Rilly’s hesitation, the undersecretary again smiled that slightly patronizing, but still gentle, smile at her.

Lady Aerin, Rilly thought, wishing for the comforting weight of Karna at her side. Aerin Fire-hair had marched into the den of dragons and had slain the great Maur all by herself. Senay, Rilly’s own sister, had stood at the side of Harimad-sol, though neither woman knew what awaited them on the other side of the mountain pass. And Harimad-sol, kidnapped from her very bed, had grown into legend because of the kelar that burned as brightly within her as the hair on her head.

“Lady Rilly, Nandam’s daughter, of Shpardith,” the undersecretary announced as Rilly braced herself in the doorway.

Rilly bowed low before entering, saluting the queen with the traditional gesture for a foreign monarch, one unseen in Damar since the ages of the fragmented kingdom. This was the first step toward recognition for her country. Though history itself would not remember Rilly, second daughter of Nandam, she would fight her hardest to ensure that it remembered the name of Damar.


End file.
